Newburgh primary will reflect charter changes

CITY OF NEWBURGH — With the primary election Sept. 10, the first steps will be taken in changing how city residents choose members of the City Council.

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By MICHAEL RANDALL

recordonline.com

By MICHAEL RANDALL

Posted Aug. 29, 2013 at 2:00 AM

By MICHAEL RANDALL

Posted Aug. 29, 2013 at 2:00 AM

» Social News

CITY OF NEWBURGH — With the primary election Sept. 10, the first steps will be taken in changing how city residents choose members of the City Council.

Charter changes approved by voters two years ago set the wheels in motion to expand the council from five members to seven. Four council members now will be elected from four wards of roughly equal population, while two council members and the mayor will continue to be elected at large by all residents.

Jonathan Jacobson, chairman of the Orange County Democratic Committee, said overall this will be good for the council.

"It will bring more viewpoints to the council," Jacobson said. And, he said, running to represent a ward will be less expensive than running to represent the entire city, which will encourage more people to run.

Democrats, in fact, will have primaries in three of the four wards, and none of the candidates have held elective office in the city before: Timothy Hayes-El, Tamie "Pebbles" Hollins and Karen Mejia in Ward 1; Eugenie Abrams and Roy Legette in Ward 2; and Cindy Holmes and Patty Sofokles in Ward 4.

Longtime incumbent Councilwoman Regina Angelo, a Democrat who lives in Ward 3, is unchallenged from her own party. She'll face former Councilman John Giudice, a Republican, in the general election in November. The other incumbent whose term is up this year, Curlie Dillard, is running for a seat in the Orange County Legislature instead.

Giudice was one of only two Republicans to file for the by-ward council races. The other is former Councilwoman Christine Bello, who's running in Ward 4.

As for those wards, they bear no resemblance to the old nine-ward map, which for many years has determined little more than where residents went to vote.

On the new map, Ward 1 is roughly the area north of Broadway and east of City Terrace, DuBois Street and Powell Avenue; Ward 2 is everything south of Broadway and east of Mill Street; Ward 3, the most sprawling, covers mostly the less-populated west end of the city, including everything west of Lake Street and Fullerton Avenue; and Ward 4 occupies the center of the city map, bounded by North Street, Fullerton Avenue, Lake Street, William Street, Mill Street, Broadway, City Terrace, DuBois Street and Powell Avenue.

The seats of the two council incumbents whose terms expire in 2015 — Gay Lee and Cedric Brown — will become the seats that are elected at large.